Renovatio Aquae: Aqueducts, Fountains, and the Tiber River in Early Modern Rome

chapter 18 Renovatio Aquae: Aqueducts, Fountains, and the Tiber River in Early Modern Rome Katherine W. Rinne The Renaissance obsession with the Renovatio Romae (Renewal of Rome) gained deeper traction in the late Cinquecento when efforts to revive Rome’s glorious architectural inheritance turned more pragmatic. Now, restoring Rome meant restoring its ancient water supply that once provided a reliable and abundant supply of pure water, but had fallen into ruin throughout the long Middle Ages. The day of this renovatio aquae (renewal of the water) can be pinpointed to 30 August 1570 when an ancient aqueduct, the Aqua Virgo (by this time known as the Acqua Vergine, the Virgin’s Aqueduct) was fully restored back to its source springs, about 16 kilometers northeast of Rome, for the first time in perhaps 600 years. Originally completed by Marcus Agrippa in 19 BC to serve his baths near the Pantheon, it was damaged during the Goth in- vasion of 537/38. Restored a few times by attentive popes, it sputtered along for the next 1000 years, but supplied only the area near the Trevi Fountain where it terminated.1 Its 1570 restoration was remarkable at many levels, and it clearly denotes a major turning point in Rome’s transmutation from a rather small medieval city—one devastated by floods, war, neglect, and poverty—into a modern metropolis. In Chapter 17, Carla Keyvanian underscores how the most essential infrastructure of a city was the network of food and water distribution. This chapter complements that analysis by emphasizing in particular the new water supply’s impact upon Rome’s physical fabric and the lives of its inhabitants. Although most apparent in the new public fountains that quickly became foci of urban development and public life as well as the admiration of international visitors, water also directly spurred expansion of other essential civic amenities. The ancient aqueducts and the exuberant Baroque fountains have received much scholarly attention, but the multivalent effects of Rome’s early modern water supply—from technical engineering and topography to issues of public utility and private control—are a new field of study for which there is little secondary 1 For a summary of aqueduct restorations, see Evans 1994. For the Aqua Virgo/Acqua Vergine, see Long 2008; Rinne 2010, ch. 2. © koninklijke brill nv, leiden, 2019 | doi:1�.1163/9789004391963_020 Renovatio Aquae 325 scholarship.2 These less studied aspects of the infrastructure include the newly built drains and sewers that carried away waste- and standing-water, creating a cleaner and more healthful city, and new stone-paved streets that by then protected the underground infrastructure and smoothed the ride for carriages and carts. The supply conduits likewise served private fountains in luxuriant private gardens owned by cardinals and nobles that became centers of cul- ture, learning, and scientific experimentation. Moreover, as we shall see, water altered the social contract as public/private partnerships evolved to increase the number of public drinking, laundry, and industrial fountains. With the restoration of the ancient aqueducts, the Renovatio Romae, Rome’s long-awaited physical renewal, could then progress at an astonishing pace. 1 Rome’s Water Supply According to Cicero, Romulus chose Rome’s site because it was “rich in springs”, and at least 23 springs of varying capacity are known to originate within the area now encircled by the city’s historic walls. The springs fed streams that flowed across a broad alluvial plain into the Tiber River—Virgil’s “river closest to god.”3 By the late 4th century BC the springs no longer satisfied the growing city, so the first long-distance aqueduct was built. Ten more were construct- ed over the next six centuries. By the early 3rd century AD Rome had more water than any other city in the empire.4 But among these, only one, the Virgo, still functioned in the 15th century, its flow negligible compared to its ancient capacity. By the Quattrocento most of Rome’s springs lay buried under debris, top- pled buildings, and alluvium deposited by countless floods.5 The streams had, for the most part, been concealed in subterranean conduits for centuries, which, because they were broken, created damp and saturated soil where pes- tilential diseases like malaria prevailed. Furthermore, the Borgo, Trastevere, and Campo Marzio districts, where most Romans lived at the time, stood at 2 See Long 2018. 3 See M. Segarra Lagunes, Il Tevere e Roma, storia di una simbiosi (Rome, 2004) for a survey of the Tiber’s history. 4 Not all 11 aqueducts functioned in the 4th century. The history of Rome’s ancient aqueducts will not be repeated here; for detailed histories, see T. Ashby, The Aqueducts of Rome (Oxford, 1935); Evans 1994. 5 For an important discussion of Rome’s water supply, the deterioration of its ancient aqueducts, and the city’s increasing sanitation problems from the 15th to the later 17th century, see Rinne 2010, 11–37..

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